Ajax retire Cruijff's number 14 as 'ode to the master'
18 April: One week before Johan Cruijff's 60th birthday (25
April) Ajax have presented their first 'birthday gift' to
the club's most famous scion: during a special
birthday dinner in Amsterdam, offered to Cruijff by
the Ajax board, chairman John Jaakke announced that Cruijff's
world famous jersey number 14 will never be worn again by an
Ajax-1 player, as per the new season.
The Ajax chairman symbolically handed Cruijff a framed Ajax
jersey with the name 'Cruijff' and jersey number 14 on the
back. "Johan Cruijff has been invaluable for Ajax and
he made the club famous around the world," Jaakke
said. "When you think of number 14, you think of Johan Cruijff.
Therefore we have decided to retire his number, as a tribute to
a unique football player. Johan turns 60, but he will
be '14' forever."
The last Ajax-1 player to have worn the #14 jersey is Roger,
not a Dutchman, but a man from Cruijff's second, adopted
motherland: the proud Spanish district of Catalonia
(Catalunya).
Johan Cruijff reacted like only he could. He
laughed and said: "It's not really a tribute, is it? It would
be a tribute if you'd always give your best player number
14..."
Number 14
Johan Cruijff did not always play with jersey number 14. The
starting line-up of every football team normally wore jersey
numbers 1 to 11 at the time. Having made his first team
début for Ajax on 15 November 1964, Cruijff mostly wore
#9 for almost six years. There is TV footage of Johan
Cruijff wearing #10 or #8, too.
The 'marriage' between Cruijff and jersey number 14 goes
back to 30 October 1970. Cruijff had been injured for many
weeks and returned to first team action as a
substitute against PSV. His jersey number was 14 and Cruijff
decided to keep that number and make it 'his'. Ajax
and their famous 'number 14' won the European
Champions Cup at the end of that season. And another in 1972.
And another in 1973.
By the time the Dutch national team travelled to West
Germany for the World Cup of 1974 the whole world knew who
'number 14' was, but there was a tiny problem: the KNVB had
decided to allocate the jersey numbers (1 to 22) to the 22
selectees in alphabetical order, regardless of their positions.
That would have made Cruijff... number 1. At the player's
personal request, however, the KNVB decided to make an
exception, so that Johan Cruijff almost conquered the
world with his own number on his back.
There is something magical to Cruijff and his
jersey number. Cruijff's moved to FC
Barcelona in 1973 and gave the proud club their first
Spanish title in... fourteen years. Meanwhile, Ajax went
through a dark, dark era. Press and fans of the Amsterdam club
thought that the club had to accept a new reality: times had
changed and it would propbably be impossible for Ajax to
ever win a European trophy again. They were wrong: Cruijff
returned to Ajax as a head-coach and brought the European Cup
Winners Cup to Amsterdam, Ajax's first European trophy in...
fourteen years. (MP)
Sources: Ajax.nl, VI.nl
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